Embodiments of the invention relate to distributed systems made up, for instance, of multiple electronic instruments or other components, and to apparatus and methods for performing distributed algorithms, such as distributed test algorithms, on such systems.
In a typical scenario, a distributed algorithm for a distributed system involves multiple, electrically connected instruments, working together to perform the distributed algorithm, such as testing the performance of a network device or an avionics component. Each instrument's behavior in the distributed algorithm can be characterized as a sequence of tasks. Many of the tasks are time-sensitive, and the start time of one task on one instrument may depend on the start time of another task on another instrument. For example, a power supply may take some time to warm up to full power, so there may be a delay between when a power supply is turned on and when a switch is set to connect that power supply to a device under test.